Pakistan se azaadi: Why the gap with India will only keep widening

The risks in using this headline are enormous, from being accused of indulging in clickbait journalism to being asked to see a shrink. I’d plead, you hear me out.

 

Of course, it can be nobody’s case that Pakistan has colonised India. In no field, be it military power, economy, culture and soft power, or global image can it ever catch up with India. That train left the station in 1983, which was around the time it chose the policy of bleeding India through a thousand cuts. This was Zia’s Pakistan on its Afghan jihad high and troubles in our Punjab were rising. This set Pakistan on a course of irreversible decline.

 

It got steeper in subsequent decades. Today, at about 55 per cent of India’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP), it sees the gap rising every quarter. A population a little over one-fifth of India’s has about one-tenth its GDP. On literacy, life expectancy, higher education, an enormous negative gap has built up for Pakistan and it is expanding.

 

Lately, there’s been some excitement over the Pakistani stock market being among the fastest-growing in the world while India has stalled for almost 18 months. This is a fact. Lift the Pakistani social media hood and look underneath. The total market cap of the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE), after this relentless 18-month boom, is about $70 billion. That’s exactly 1.35 per cent of the NSE, despite its long stall.

 

Today, seven Indian companies are individually valued more than the KSE. Reliance is three and a half times, HDFC, Bharti Airtel and TCS nearly twice or much more. Go downwards a little, and 14 companies are valued above $50 billion. Its trade with the United States is less than a tenth of India’s. Its imports from China, its most valuable ally, patron, protector and the largest trading partner, is just about $16 billion, including 85 per cent of its armament imports. India’s imports from China total $116 billion and it includes no armaments, thank you. On almost any economic indicator, Pakistan is worse than its GDP being one-tenth of India’s. Its two biggest airlines have 44 aircraft, whereas IndiGo and Air India together have 700 and are adding one a week. That’s about 16 times Pakistan’s.

 

The neighbours are today batting in completely different leagues. The prospects of “trillions of dollars worth of critical minerals,” or “humongous oil reserves;” are just fantasy. At this point, it is also fuelled by the self-anointed Field Marshal’s reading of the scriptures and his interpretation that since Pakistan is only the second nation formed on the Islamic kalma after Madina, it must also have oil and minerals underneath its soil like the Saudis. As Ghalib said: Dil ke khush rakhne ka Ghalib yeh khayal achcha hai (it’s a useful thought to console yourselves).

 

In short, Pakistan not only has zero chance of catching up with India, but will also see the gap rising. At various points in time, its leaders will offer its people the same snake oil in different bottles: Critical minerals, hydrocarbons, gold, and the latest, the Amazon of JF-17s for the Islamic world and its non-state warlords. The hard fact is that the only area where Pakistan can narrow the gap with India is population. Its growth here is about twice as much as India’s. Is this what you want?

 

The Pakistani elites, including Munir, know they’ve been left behind. That dumper truck versus the “shiny” Mercedes statement reflects that. He can never win a war, or even a short skirmish. He only has one power: The power to slow India down, and to fuel big-power anxieties over the nuclear subcontinent.

 

It is this negative leverage that India has to learn to counter. Begin by looking at the big picture. Have we, over the past decade, allowed Pakistan to take a much bigger space in our minds than it deserves? A much larger weight in our politics than is prudent? Have we unnecessarily created space in our polarised politics for an economically and strategically defeated Pakistan?

 

Since January 2016, when Narendra Modi’s peace overture was destroyed by the Pathankot airbase terror attack, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) politics has become increasingly dependent on Hindu-Muslim polarisation. There is no arguing that “sab ka saath/sab ka vikaas” works with welfare distribution and nobody is denied any benefits because of identity. But, the sentimental appeal is limited to the Hindu voter. And for that, the threat from Pakistan must always be there.

 

How it complicates our strategic interest and positioning is evident in the way the game is playing out with Bangladesh. That India was denied a friend in Sheikh Hasina Wazed shouldn’t mean that India won’t have any friends there. Whatever the Jamaat, and even Muhammad Yunus might think of Pakistan, Bangladesh is surrounded by India on three sides, an essential, much bigger neighbour with indispensable linkages.

 

Polarised politics, especially with West Bengal and Assam polls coming up, means that the relationship with Bangladesh will only worsen before India — inevitably — begins repairs with the newly elected government there. Even if the new government is friendly with Pakistan, it is too far and has no resources.  Bangladesh will need India’s goodwill to put its own polity and economy together. Chinese weapons? Ms Hasina also mostly bought weapons from China. So there’s no difference.

 

It’s in this big picture that we need to reflect on the Mustafizur Rahman/IPL issue. Some people these days get triggered at the mention of soft power. But cricket is India’s hard power, given how important the game is in the subcontinent.

 

Think about this: Is our hosting and patronising Afghan cricket team an expression of soft, or hard power? Will you read it in isolation of the troubles the current Afghan government is giving the Pakistanis? That’s why not shaking hands with the Pakistanis, even while you play them, and limiting that “anger” only to cricket, or blackballing the solitary Bangladeshi picked by an IPL franchise opens up more space for Pakistan in India’s neighbourhood. Is that loss of soft or hard power? It hands over our strategic policy to social media.

 

This is no hasty generalisation. In the same period that the no hand-shaking and take-no-trophies-from-a-Pakistani reared its head, we played the junior Sultan of Johor Cup league match in hockey (Oct 14, 2025) where the players not only shook hands, but also high-fived before a 3-3 draw. Of course, India went to the final, not Pakistan.

 

Were the hockey boys any less patriotic? Did the government pull out the red card? Nothing. It is only because its social media base didn’t take notice. Who cares about hockey? Like a champion heavyweight fighter, a big power fights as much through its footwork as with the power of its punches. Pakistan needs to constrain India’s space. India cannot fall into that trap.

 

For the moment, the Pakistanis seem a bit chastened. But at some point, Munir would do something to slow us down. For India to deny that, it must rebuild its ties in the neighbourhood, stabilise its ties with China, and keep internal social cohesion. And finally, begin spending big on defence.

 

Pakistan has a broken economy. Bait it with a new arms race, and that will push it back further. Sounds like beggar-my-neighbour? What else to do with a neighbour whose only game is to try and slow you down.

 

We must deny Pakistan an undeserved place in our politics and in our minds. That’s what the headline says: Pakistan se azaadi.

 

By special arrangement with ThePrint